1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a spinning reel, and more particularly to a spinning reel comprising a reel body, a spool shaft connected to a spool mounted forwardly of the reel body, a drag mechanism mounted on a rear end of the reel body for applying a braking force to rotation of the spool shaft, and means for adjusting the braking force of the drag mechanism having a first control element for determining a reference braking force and a second control element for varying the braking force.
2. Description of the Related Art
An example of the spinning reel as noted above is shown in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 63-29423. In this prior art, an adjusting system for adjusting the braking force of the drag mechanism includes a screw type mechanism and a cam type mechanism separately from each other. The first control element is attached to the screw type mechanism while the second control element is attached to the cam type mechanism. In order to adjust the braking force of the drag mechanism, the first control element is rotatable to determine the reference braking force while only the second control element is pivotable to rapidly vary the braking force when a fish bites.
In adjusting the braking force of the drag mechanism while fishing with the spinning reel of this type, the greater the amount of a fishing line fed from the spool, the smaller the winding diameter of the fishing line defined around the spool becomes, even if the braking force of the drag mechanism is constant. As a result, a tensile force of the fishing line capable of rotating the spool against the braking force of the drag mechanism becomes greater. Thus, when the amount of the fishing line fed from the spool becomes greater, it is desirable to decrease the braking force of the drag mechanism in order to reduce the possibility of breaking the fishing line.
For the purpose of decreasing the braking force of the drag mechanism with a feed-out amount of the fishing line, the second control element may be used. However, if the second control member is used for decreasing the braking force of the drag mechanism, it may possibly reach a limit when a fish bites and the angler tries to further decrease the braking force for "fighting" against the fish. This is disadvantageous in handling the reel.
In order to avoid such a problem, it is desirable to control the first control element as frequently as possible to set the reference braking force to a proper value. However, it is troublesome to individually operate the first and second control elements while fishing and concurrently the senses of operating these control elements are different, which requires an improvement in such a structure.